STUART 2: Rodent Redux

By: Frederick C. Szebin
Date: Thursday, February 10, 2000
Source: Hollywood Reporter

It should come as a surprise to absolutely no one that Columbia Pictures has green lighted a sequel to their mighty mouse hit, STUART LITTLE. Set for a Christmas, 2001 release, STUART II could start filming as soon as this summer with a budget pretty close to the original film's $100 million-plus. STUART LITTLE has so far grossed $128.6 million domestically, which put Columbia execs on the hunt for sequel writers, completely bypassing the first film's original scribes, Gregory Brooker and M. Night Shyamalan, who will not be returning.
Meanwhile, executive producer Stephen Waterman, hot on the heels of STUART's success, has optioned the feature film rights on the late George Seldon's popular 1960 children's book THE CRICKET IN TIMES SQUARE and its half dozen sequels. The story of Chester, a musically inclined cricket who uses his talents to help save a Times Square newsstand from bankruptcy, was animated in the 1970s, but this new version will be a live action/CGI conglomerate. Harry the cat and Tucker the mouse will join Mario, the son of the newsstand's owners in Chester's reel world, which reportedly will ultimately contain all of Seldon's and illustrator Garth Williams' Chester the Cricket stories, which also include CHESTER CRICKET'S PIGEON RIDE, CHESTER CRICKET'S NEW HOME, and others. The Cricket deal was originally on Disney's want list, but after negotiations fell through, Waterman (whose previous credits include Casper and Kull) managed to sweep in and grab the deal, enabling him to add more cute CGI critters to his growing stable.